Letter: No birth, no child

In case people have been taken in by the obfuscation and misdirection, I want to point out that this year's ballot contains an inappropriate question, because it is a religious one. The proponents of the ballot question are once again trying to have the state of Colorado enforce a religious belief on all its citizens.

The issue is abortion. In spite of the fact that the Supreme Court (in the 1973 decision Roe v. Wade) said that abortion is a private medical issue, certain religionists are still poking their noses into other people's private medical affairs.

If a person believes that abortion is wrong, she should not have one.

If a person is a member of a religious group that says abortion is wrong, yet she has one anyway, it is still a private matter, between her and her god.

The most important question about this ballot question is: Why is the state of Colorado being roped into arbitrating a religious issue?

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Why do religionists want to force all Colorado citizens to be anti-abortion?

The state is secular, and it should be. The state of Colorado should not be involved in a religious debate.

The state exists for all citizens: the sanely religious, the sanely non-religious, the absurdly religious, and the absurdly non-religious.

There shouldn't be a debate – much less a ballot issue – about abortion, because the issue is no one's public business, and it's the private business only of the person who wants one.

Medically speaking, abortion is only between a woman and a doctor. Religiously speaking, abortion is only between a woman and her god. Socially and politically, abortion is not an issue at all.

When Mother Nature herself allows abortion – it's called a miscarriage – why should thinking human beings who are already free to choose… be unnaturally disallowed from having one?

I never thought I would have to point this out in public, but for clarity's sake, I will. There is no such thing as an "unborn child."

The unborn is a zygote, an embryo, a fetus… in that order. And abortion is legal in the first trimester of a pregnancy. Until a pregnancy ends with a birth, there is no child at all. A "child" is why there's a "birth" certificate, why there's a "birth" day.

No birth, no child. It's so simple, even an absurd religionist could understand it.